Los Angeles daily herald., 1887-09-23
DAILY HERALD.
GIRLS WHO GO IN FOR SPORT
The Pcculiarities of the Yachting
Girl, the Horscy Girl, the TEN
ms umd Bathing Girl.

The Peculiarities of the Yachting z
Girl. the Horscy Girl, the Ten
nrs and Bathing Girl.
New YORK, September 12.-The
women who are interested in sport in
New York show the way their tastes
run. even to careless observer. The
tennis girl apparently reaps the most
benefit from her fad, for it makes her
straight, strong and athletic. The
horse-racing girl suffers the most, for
she invariably tends to loudness and
dash. At this precise season of the
year the yachting girl holds the whip
hand. She knows more about the
Thistle than the men who built her,
and the amount of sea-dog slang that
she can toss off concerning the powers
and prospects OF the Volunteer would
startle Burgess himself. She despises
clothes and goes yachting in the SIM
plest of costumes. The dress is usu-
ally OF some woolen stuff, the shoes
made of canvas with rubber soles,
and the hat of the conventional sailor
pattern. Size wears glass slune
over her shoulder, and when she is
going for short cruise, she daubs the
end of her nose with magnesia with
out the slightest traces of bashfulness.
"It looks SO horrid," she says "to
have the end OF ones nose blazing red,
while the rest of the face is white. "
BY plastering the nose up it retains its
customary pallor, while the cheeks get
the sudjet tinge.
1t takes a good deal of character to
be crack yachting girl, for yachts
men are proverbially tricky and the
Temptations that beset the girl are
great. 1t is the easiest thing in the
world to sail away and leave the chap
erone behind or to run out in rough
water SO the chaperone will get sick
and go below. There is hard drinking,
moonlight, romanticism, long and de-
lightful hours OF loneliness and many
other equally dangerous things on
board a Yacht, and the yachting girl
who gets through her first season
without being touched with scandal
in one way or another is remarkable
girl indeed.
Horse racing will pull woman to
pieces in short order. | have never
vet met but one thorough good woman
gambler, and she was an emotional
society actress of the most languishing
school. She could play poker like
Mississippi gambler, and she never
lost her head. Her rage for play was
absolutely irresistible. She gave up
her family for the stage and she gave up
the stage for the card table. Finally
she cut herself loose from what few
respectable friends she had and mar
ried bookmaker. Instead of making
his fortune, as everybody thought she
would, she sent him higher than a
kite the first month after she was
married, for she was not content with
the commissions OF book-maxing, but
insisted on speculating Independently.
She and her husband are now two of the
most pitiful specimens of broken down
sports, who ever stared at a quarter
stretch. Girls who attend the races
regularly 60 the pace with marvellous
rapidity. They begin by adding little
touches to their toilets, such as horsey
collars, white over-gaiters, cloth jack
cts, all sorts OF badges, betting books
and 80 on. They learn all the mar
velous lingo of the track from each
other, and they bet with feverish anx-
iety on race after race. l have seen
them, even at the first-class tracks,
pledging their jewelry and watches,
and begging like convicts pleading for
their lives. They are not always par
ticular about the size of odds. Their
main desire is to gamble on the race,
and they invariably scorn all study OF
records, and 60 entirely on the die
tates of what they call luck.
Everybody in America must be by
this time familiar with the lawn tennis
girl. The man who invented the game
was benefactor of womankind. Girls
whose systems are run down by too
many dances, dinners and parties
during the winter, and who 60 into
the country exhausted and tagged by
the hard work of pleasure, straighten
out into 1.-the, supple and bright-eyed
athletes within week after they get
near the tennis net. Their corsets
and their high-heeled boots are thrown
aside, and they dress in loose fannels
and low-heeled shoes. The exercise
in the open air brings the roses to
their cheeks and makes their ewes
sparkle and clears away all traces of
the winters work.
Bathing girls are found in great
numbers on the south coast Of Long
Island and at the big watering places.
Most of them have the science of the
bath down to complete and thor
oughlv perfected system. 1t takes |
about four hours for the really emf
nent bathing girls to get through with |
their bath. OF this time about twen-
ty minutes are actually spent in the |
water. She devotes the first half hour
to sitting on the beach and wondering |
if the water is cold, while she keeps
an an alert eye to the windward for a |
desirable man. The next half hour !
is spent in disrobing, and most of the |
following hour to burying her legs in |
the sand and looking at the water
with more or less affection and es-
TEEN. Then if the right man comes
along she ventures in, is soused once |
or twice, and retires to the beach to
reyel in the sand again. She will sit |
for hours with the sand running
through her fingers, talking soft |
nothings to the right man, if he hap
pens to be still at her side. Then she |
dresses with great care and delibera-
ton, and talks during the dinner of |
the fury of the surf and the wild bat |
ties she had with the waves.
The girls who drive are necessarily |
limited in number. Only the very |
wealthy ones can afford to drive for |
sport. pure and simple. Yesterday |
CHANGED to be in small village named |
Greenwich, some thirty miles from
New York, and l saw driving girl
at her best. She wore black and |
white tailor made check suit with a
very high collar, and an exceedingly
fetching sort of a hat. She sat very
high on the seat of dog cart, with
her feet stretched out in front of her,
and the toes q her russet leather !